Serena and Erik EXTRA: Nightmares
by DonJuana19
Summary: Short based off of the poll results of what sort of "Deleted Scene" you all wanted to see between these two. My apologies for the wait!


**A/N:** **Here's that Extra I promised you ages ago... I'm sorry that the state of my muse and the craziness of life has left you all hanging for so long. Inspiration is returning after a long vacation... so I'm easing my way back into the story of Serena and Erik! More to come soon, including a continuation of the main plotline. :) Bear with me, dear readers! I hope you enjoy this fluffiness until I get a little sturdier on my feet. ~DonJuana**

Serena awoke suddenly. Apart from the few years after her parents had passed, when she had cried nightly for the angels to bring them back to her, she normally slept through the night with ease. But every now and again, her sensitive ears would pick up a sound which would draw her out of her unconscious state...

What had it been this time?

" _Please Mother... I swear I will never do it again!" he cried out through his sobs as the beautiful but vain and cold-hearted woman advanced toward him. Oh, how she_ hurt _him for doing things like this... how angry she always got..._

 _But he had just been so hungry!_

Serena sat up in the bed, straining her ears as she listened for a repeat of the mysterious sound. But the room was deathly silent, apart from...

The sound of Erik's breathing mere feet from where she sat. She smiled to herself. It was very rare that he allowed himself the luxury of sleep, despite her telling him over and over that he needed more of it. And, even though he tried his best to hide it, she always knew in the mornings when he had snuck bashfully into the bed. Gentlemanly as he was, he could do nothing to mask the rich, musky scent he left behind in the sheets after a long night's rest. That delicious aroma which now permeated the air, settling about her like a gossamer haze... reminding her of other moments of skin-prickling closeness to him...

Her face grew hot, and she pulled her knees up to her chest. She could _not_ think like that when he lay so close to her. When they were sharing a bed...

She shook her head, trying to rid herself of these scandalous thoughts. She focused in on the sound of his breathing, hoping that the sluggish, easy pattern would lull her back to sleep. But that's when she noticed that it was not slow and calm at all...

 _His mother's face morphed into the sharp, beady head of a snake. With her forked tongue she pierced him again and again, drawing blood and leaving neat, stinging slits in his papery skin. He screamed and cried, attempting feebly to cover his face with his bleeding arms. But the merciless attacks continued, all while she stared at him hatefully and hissed that she_ wished him dead...

 _Black spots danced across his vision, and he could feel himself growing weaker and weaker. With one last, "Mother, please! Forgive Erik!" and a cold twist of Fate in the answering of his pleas, she grinned viciously, opened her scaly mouth wide, and swallowed him up._

 _But if he was dead, why had the pain not stopped?_

Not long after her realization of his distress, she discovered what it had been that woke her: "Mea Culpa... mea culpa... mea maxima culpa, mater!" Erik began to groan, and, from the way the mattress shuddered beneath her, she could tell he was growing restless. She bit her lip; the poor man must be having a nightmare. Should she wake him? Spare him the pain?

...and why was he mumbling Latin contritions?

"Erik?" she whispered cautiously.

 _For what felt like an eternity did he sit in that darkness, alone, rocking back and forth and whimpering as he was reminded of the times that his childhood punishments would include being locked in a small, dark place for several hours. Marie had found out and made his mother stop after a while, but every now and again, when Marie would remain absent from the house for a few days, she would see it fit to do so again..._

 _He had learned to accept and soon_ embrace _the dark, in those years... but this dark was different. These shadows felt_ wrong _..._

 _A light finally flickered to life. As his eyes adjusted he saw it to be a solitary candle, floating in the air..._

 _No, not floating. Someone was holding it. A pair of pale, elegant hands..._

 _His gaze snapped up to the woman's dimly lit face._ Serena.

 _She smiled at him then, but not in her usual, kind way. This was a smirk with a secret... an expression that dripped simultaneously with seduction and danger. And, though he knew that he was already weak and that she looked as if she were planning something dreadful, he was irreversibly drawn to her..._

 _"Serena, my sweetest love..." he murmured, stumbling to his feet and reaching out to her._

 _Her eerily sinister grin grew, and she dashed into his arms. "Erik... my_ Don Juan _... I have been waiting for you..." Her soft little voice rose to a quivering, pleasured timbre, as if his mere arrival was a ravishment for her. She then took solid hold of his hands—hers freezing cold—and placed them feverishly on her waist. But not for long, no... then she guided them up and down... to places that normally would have made his heart beat with the quickened pulse of desire, but now left him feeling nothing but horrified and unsettled. He took a few steps back, praying that she would stop and become her more practical self once more._

 _But she merely followed him, chuckling. "What is the matter, Don Juan Triumphante..." she hissed, "Is this not what you have wanted from me all along? What has filled your fantasies from the moment we met? Come, and make me slave to my remaining, functional senses... come, and_ make _me your love..." but as she spoke, her face momentarily flashed to become something inhuman: an emaciated creature of hell that reminded him of his own face. But he loved her even then... until he saw that her blind eyes were not her own._

 _"No... you are not my Serena. You lie! Leave me be, demons... leave me!" he yelled, shoving the Serena-doppleganger away. It snarled as it lost control of him, then, realizing it had lost... but then, as it flew through the air from the force of his blow, it began to laugh maniacally: a bone-chilling announcement of_ some _sort of victory. That's when he realized that the candle had toppled out of the creature's hands... that it had tumbled to the ground and instantly set the area ablaze. The doppleganger disappeared from sight, but its laughter perpetuated through the growing heat of the burning room._

 _As his eyes darted about, searching for an escape, they suddenly fell upon a crumpled lump laying across the floor... a very familiar, feminine shape..._

 _"Serena!" he cried, rushing over to her. He turned her over to look at her, and saw in anguish that, her stomach and chest was lacerated by claw marks. The monster had gotten to her first._

 _He began to sob, throwing herself onto her decimated form. That's when he felt the slow, ragged rise and fall of her chest... her hand shakily rising up to rest on his cheek._

 _"Do not cry for me, Erik..." she whispered, a delirious smile dancing across her face in synchronization with the flickering of the flames closing in around them, "I always knew, I always knew..."_

 _"You always knew what, my darling? What are you talking about?" he croaked in reply, smoothing her hair._

 _She closed her eyes, exhaled slowly, and looked the personification of death as her smile froze with ghostly peace on her lovely face. "I always knew that the second I fell in love with you, I would meet my end in fire..." she muttered, "that I would burn so long as I loved you. And you knew it, too, didn't you? That it was only a matter of time before our love turned into a one-sided witness of my diminishment into ashes... my disappearance into your dark, hidden history..."_

 _And as they were both licked up by the flames, he knew._

The moment he began to shout senselessly, fighting off some unseen force, she took hold of his shoulders, shaking him and begging him to wake up. "Erik, it is just a dream! Wake up!"

 _The fire felt like scalding hands, grabbing him from all sides. He swatted at it in a panic, part of him believing that this hopeless action could keep the blaze at bay, save them..._

The moment she touched him, it became her that he fought against. He thrashed wildly, trying to remove himself from her grip, but she held firm. "Erik, Erik it is me! It is Serena, please!" she pleaded desperately. But it would seem that whatever incubus afflicted him had completely taken over... soon she found herself sailing through the air as his arm flew towards her and knocked her breathlessly off the bed. She landed on her back, which stung as it came in contact with the hard wooden floor, and she stifled a cry as she struggled to regain her sense of direction.

God, she hated falling.

The sound of his beloved's cry, it would seem, was what unconscious Erik had been waiting for all along. He snapped awake, sitting up and gasping as if having just emerged from an attempted drowning. He looked around wildly, wincing as his eyes fell upon the shadowed candlestick resting on the dresser, but gradually descended back into a more perceptive state of mind as he realized that he had only been dreaming. ' _Mon dieu, these nighttime terrors are getting worse and worse with each passing day...'_ he whimpered internally, biting his lip and rubbing his shriveled temple.

"E-Erik?"

He perked at the sound, scouring the darkness once again for a blessed assurance that Serena was alive and well. That's when he found her, sprawled across the floor, and immediately leapt out of bed. "Serena! What on Earth—"

"What on Earth were you dreaming about, is more the question... you were thrashing as if the devil himself had possessed you!" she asked worriedly, crawling to him and taking his hands. His mind flashed back to the nightmare, where her doppleganger had done similarly.

"He had," he answered her weakly. But he did not pull his hands away... no. For it was truly her this time, and her warm, concerned presence was like a beacon that he longed to draw closer to.

Serena wished that she could force him to talk about it, to express all of the dreadful images he had just been subject to so that they would be released and fly away forever. Or, at least so that they could suffer together; so he did not have to be alone in his fear. But she could feel his racing pulse beneath her fingertips, and the cold sweat radiating off of his skin... so she resolved to simply provide him with the comfort she feared he had never before received in his life.

Wordlessly, she wrapped her arms around his neck and held him.

Erik did not know what generous God was allowing him this solace, but he did not make the errant mistake of letting it go to waste. He pulled himself to Serena and burrowed his face in her shoulder, weeping wretchedly but shamelessly in his overwhelmed state. And Serena, her heart breaking for him, tightened her arms around him. "Hush now, I'm here..." she whispered, stroking his hair and rocking him back and forth as she remembered her mother always would to comfort her. Erik tried to say something in reply, but could not form the words to so much as thank her. His heart swelled with such love, and yet his dream still haunted him with the danger of what his love could do to her...

Serena sighed, wishing that she knew a way to more quickly allay his pain. But then a notion came to her... a notion she need not consider for long before realizing it was the exact sort of comfort he needed. " _Au clair de la lune, mon ami Pierrot..."_ she began to sing quietly, her cheeks flushing as she did. She was a pianist, not a singer. Her voice was nothing special; she was certain it was nothing like what he was _used_ to hearing, probably having the finest singers in the world at his disposal at any given moment, through the power of the Shah. But perhaps she would get lucky; perhaps he would be so enveloped by drowsy haze that he wouldn't realize her vocal inadequacy...

 _'Oh... oh what_ sweetness... _'_ Erik gasped internally. To hear a lullaby, in his own native tongue, and all _sung by this_ angel _who had bewitched his soul so suddenly..._

His heart was monstrous, had he a heart at all— if it had not by now been shredded to negligible pieces as atonement for all of his grave sins and dreadful countenance— but hearing her sing, he thought in overwhelming awe and adoration, surely had the power to transform his blackened heart to something beautiful and whole. For it was not a magnificent, soaring, voice... it was not fit for opera, or public performance of any sort... but, in its intimate tenderness and warmth, it was _redemptive_ , and, resultantly, the most glorious sound he had ever heard.

" _Prete-moi ta plume... pour écrire un mot_ ," Serena could not feel Erik relaxing against her, and had she not been singing, she would have sighed in relief. For in the time she had known him, _nothing_ had frightened Erik. Even the Shah and the horrible Khanum, in all of their powerful treachery, had never intimidated him, but only _infuriated_ him. To find him like this, so vulnerable and petrified, made her as sick with dread as it did break her heart. But she supposed that everyone had something which never failed to bring them to their knees... even the most dangerous man in Persia had his demons.

" _Ma chandelle est morte; je n'ai plus de feu... ouvre-moi ta porte pour l'amour de Dieu..."_

It was such a simple lullaby, the lyrics no more profound than a silly folklore. But somehow that made it all the more sweet; the story of Harlequin and the nameless lady was so mindless and comedic that all he could do was smile as he listened to it unfold, letting his inner terrors be banished by the lightness of the song. Not to mention how he found it nearly impossible to dwell upon even the most fleeting of dark thoughts when he was encompassed so gently in the arms of this woman who was killing him softly with love...

" _Au clair de la lune, Pierrot repondit, 'Je n'ai pas de plume, je suis dans mon lit... va chez la voisine, je crois qu'elle y est... car dans sa cuisine on bat le briquet. Au clair de la lune, l'aimable Harlequin frappe chez la brune... elle repond soudain. Au clair de la lune, on n'y voit qu'un peu... on chercha la plume, on chercha du feu. En cherchant d'la sorte, je ne sais ce qu'on trouva... mais je sais que la porte sur eux se ferma."_

By the time she had finished, Serena could feel that Erik's breathing had settled back into normalcy, his sobs ceasing as his body went limp in her arms. Now she did sigh in relief, ever so quietly, allowing herself a tearful smile as she continued to rock them back and forth. In this moment, he seemed so far from the threatening figure he was forced to be daily; with all of his protective walls collapsed around him in a moment of panic, she did not feel the strength of the muscles in his shoulders, but the way the bones of them jutted out from behind his nightshirt, feeling as light-weight and hollow and breakable as a bird's. Not how tall and imposing he was in stature, but how lean he was... how his loose-fitting clothing seemed to swallow him up as his slim chest rose and fell beneath them. It was fascinating, she realized as she sat there, waiting for him to fall deeply enough into sleep that perhaps she could lie back down herself, how completely sleep could transform a man— one need not have the ability to see when the night was such a masterful revealer of a man's truest self.

Suddenly she could not help but think of her mother, of the nights she had spent in her arms, listening to the very same lullaby she had sung. Normally, such a recollection would have caused the slightest pang of grief... but it was as if with the passing off of the song to someone else, the sadness of the memory had left, and only the good things remained. The warmth of her mother's presence, curled around her... the whispered laughter in her voice as she sang of the amiable Harlequin...

Minutes later, she was half-asleep. Now, if you were to ask her what she did next, she would not remember... she would have blushingly told you how she fell asleep still entwined with a cradled Erik, dreaming of the many songs her mother sang to her while she was alive. But before she drifted off, she sang but one last verse, in the breathiest of voices:

" _Au clair de la lune, on n'y voit qu'un peu... on chercha la douceur, on chercha du amour. En cherchant d'la sorte, je ne sais ce qu'on trouva..._ _mais je sais que_ _une nouvelle porte_ _ouverte_ _cette nuit_ _."_


End file.
